Many methods used by the state are beneath the waterline, and have surfaced in other countries. Internet usage there is among the fastest-growing in the world, even as the government pursues an ambitious program of censorship. In Venezuela, a case that we examine below in depth, all three of these factors are in play. Third, while the internet is viewed as a global phenomenon, censorship can seem a parochial or national issue-in other words, isolated.
Second, in many places internet usage and censorship are rapidly expanding at the same time. First, some tools for controlling the media are masquerading as market disruptions.
Its scope seems hard to appreciate for several reasons. But even more surprising is how much censorship is hidden.
When we started to map examples of censorship, we were alarmed to find so many brazen cases in plain sight. But this, it turns out, is not a universal law. It seems capable of redrafting any equation of power in which information is a variable, starting in newsrooms. How is this happening? As journalists, we’ve seen firsthand the transformative effects of the internet. They are also creating more subtle tools to complement the blunt instruments of attacking journalists.Īs a result, the internet’s promise of open access to independent and diverse sources of information is a reality mostly for the minority of humanity living in mature democracies. In countries such as Hungary, Ecuador, Turkey, and Kenya, officials are mimicking autocracies like Russia, Iran, or China by redacting critical news and building state media brands. Like entrepreneurs, they are relying on innovation and imitation. Today, many governments are routing around the liberating effects of the internet. Governments went from spectators in the digital revolution to sophisticated early adopters of advanced technologies that allowed them to monitor journalists, and direct the flow of information. In 1993, John Gilmore, an internet pioneer, told Time, “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” Some have argued that the birth of the internet foreshadowed the death of censorship. In theory, new technologies make it more difficult, and ultimately impossible, for governments to control the flow of information. Illustrating this point is a curious fact: Censorship is flourishing in the information age. Moreover, in many poor countries or in those with autocratic regimes, government actions are more important than the internet in defining how information is produced and consumed, and by whom. Yet they obscure evidence that governments are having as much success as the internet in disrupting independent media and determining the information that reaches society. It is hard to disagree with these two beliefs. The second is that the internet and the communication and information tools it spawned, like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, are shifting power from governments to civil society and to individual bloggers, netizens, or “citizen journalists.” The first is that the internet is the most powerful force disrupting the news media. Two beliefs safely inhabit the canon of contemporary thinking about journalism.
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